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Bush Contradicted Again President Bush

Juan Cole 02/19/2004

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Bush Contradicted Again

President Bush keeps saying that everyone thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war, implying that if he was wrong, he was in good company.

But Deutsche Welle reports of UN weapons inspector Hans Blix in February and March of 2003: ‘Blix recalled that the inspectors visited nearly 70 sites in Iraq and never found anything substantial that might have justified the war. He admitted that many things had remained unaccounted for, but said more inspections on the ground could have helped answer important questions. “We said that you cannot put an equation mark between ‘unaccounted for’ and ‘existing.’ And I said that in a statement to the Security Council quite squarely,” Blix explained. “The U.S. side did not really register this; they didn’t care. They believed more in the defectors in their own intelligence than they believed in us.”

This is not to mention that International Atomic Energy Agency official Muhammad al-Baradei examined US claims that Iraq was importing aluminum tubing to enrich uranium, and had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, and pronounced both claims false, before the war was launched.

So, there were lots of knowledgeable people who challenged the claims Bush was making. In fact, they were much more knowledgeable on this matter than he was. Which wasn’t hard.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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